


Tributaries

by lightningwaltz



Category: 999: Nine Hours Nine Persons Nine Doors - Fandom
Genre: Codependency, Gen, Missing Scene, Recovery, Siblings, Spoilers, Survivor Guilt, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-16
Updated: 2014-06-16
Packaged: 2018-02-04 23:30:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1797313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightningwaltz/pseuds/lightningwaltz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Santa and June in the years between nonary games.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tributaries

**Author's Note:**

  * For [axilet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/axilet/gifts).



> Axilet asked for fic about Akane and Aoi in the years between nonary games. I've always wondered about how Akane explained the whole "I will burn alive in nine years" thing to him, and this fic ended up shaping itself around answering that question. I imagine it could have gone a couple of different ways, but this is one potential scenario for it.
> 
> I hope you enjoy, Axilet!

The lawyer pushed a document across the shiny table, where it came to rest a few millimeters from the tips of Aoi’s fingers. Save for the lavish letterhead, it was a pristine and monochromatic pile of paper.

“Can you remind me what this thing says we have to do?” When Akane spoke, the woman had to lean in to hear her.

“If you accept this settlement, you can never take this issue to court. If you speak publically about your experiences in Cradle’s experiment, you will forfeit this settlement as well. If you use any of it before forfeiting the agreement, you will have to pay the company back.” The check was right there, next to the woman’s right hand. Waiting to be deployed.

Aoi cracked his knuckles so hard he thought he might break them, but no one else seemed to hear. The air conditioner rumbled away, and he wondered how much it cost to cool a building this large.

“What do you mean by ‘speaking publicly?’” Akane had become demure around strangers, and Aoi was trying to not worry about it.

“Well, I mean… It’s right there in that contract.” The lawyer glanced at her watch. She rattled off that they were prohibited from things like magazine interviews and blog posts. Anything that could be traced back to them. Akane took fastidious notes on a small, yellow legal pad, blue ink smudging against her fingers. The pen was a fancy thing that glittered with gold lettering across the side, and it probably cost more than Aoi made in a month.

“I see. Basically, we can’t say anything about it at all. If anyone speaks up about this, it has to be Cradle.” For some reason a small smile bloomed and then withered on Akane’s face.

“You’d be getting a lot of money out of this, you know,” the woman reminded the pair of them. “If you pursued a case against them would… You’d end up much poorer than you are now. No one would believe you, anyway. This is better in the long run.”

Despite her polite mask, Aoi could see the woman was writhing from discomfort. She’d offered this speech to other Cradle victims, watched them cry, watched them swallow their pride, watched them snatch up the money. She kept her employers’ secrets and she hated her job every minute of every day. Aoi hated her right back.

“We’re not agreeing to this,” Aoi said. His first words since their initial greetings. He aimed it at Akane, taking care to not spare the lawyer a glance.

“Ah.” He had to hand it to his opponent; the woman never even flinched. She picked up her own pen, and added an additional zero onto the check. This had never been a negotiation, and there was never a way for Aoi to win.

Akane squeaked, her posture going rigid.

“Your bosses can’t just _do_ things like this.” Aoi drew in a deep breath. He settled into his rant, got comfortable and secure in it. Anger could be like a security blanket and, holy shit, he was so _angry_ these days. “Do you seriously think-”

Akane’s hand clamped down on his wrist.

“Take the money. Aoi.” When she spoke his name, it was an entirely different sentence. “It’s okay. You’ll need it.”

Somehow, that settled it. Less than a minute after his outburst, he found himself scrawling his signature onto the contract, and then handing it over to his sister. On the way out of the building, Akane held onto the check as carefully as one might hold on to a piece of glass. It was a windy day, and Aoi wondered what he would do if the wind blew it away. He didn't know what he wanted to happen.

"This doesn't have to end here for you," she said. "You can get your best revenge now, by living well."

It was the second time she'd implied Aoi would be alone in the future. He wanted to ask her about it, but he remained tongue-tied. She was just a caring, compassionate child. That was all her concern meant.

"Sure. You'll help me out with that, right? Living well?"

"I... yeah. Yes!"

 

*

Aoi exiled the check to a small safe in the back of a closet. For days on end, the two of them ignored their financial windfall. They rationed their food, as they always did. Aoi continued to keep his eyes open for deals on necessities like milk and bread. Akane went around turning off lights to save on electricity. And Aoi continued to regret how she’d picked up the habit from him.

Business as usual.

One morning, Aoi discovered his sister reading a newspaper. It lay spread out in front of her on the kitchen table, and she rested her chin on her folded arms.

“Whatcha reading?”

Akane raised her eyes to the ceiling. “Propaganda,” she said, the word sounding too old for her.

The headlines screeched about the runaway epidemic in their country. Why, just last month there had been sixteen children who’d taken off, and then returned without a bit of shame.

“Makes me wonder about all the things I thought were true but just… aren’t.” She didn’t sound sad, or angry, or… anything. Curiosity tinged her speech, but she was as detached as the clouds above.

Aoi walked away- mostly to avoid punching the table- and discovered that the fridge was mostly empty.

“We have to talk about the money,” Aoi said over his shoulder, is his most careful, casual voice. It was probably the least tactful moment to bring it up, but there would probably never be a good time.

“Let’s go ahead and use it.” She made a sound that was probably meant to be a scoff. “We earned it.”

“If we use it, will they be able to spy on us? Like, through bank transactions? I don’t like them knowing what we’re doing.”

“What if we cashed it all?” She tilted her head, watching him. “They couldn't track it, and it would be kinda funny to walk around with a briefcase full of money.”

Aoi laughed at the sudden image of his little sister dressed up like a gangster, sunglasses shielding her eyes, violin case nestled under her arm. “We wouldn't be able to spend it on anything respectable.”

“It works out, then. It’s not like Cradle is respectable.”

He stood behind her chair, patting her once on the head. Like their mother did when they were toddlers. “We could use it to move, at least.”

“Out of town?”

“Out of the country. That would probably help us feel like we got away from them, right?” He must have sounded like this when he’d given her Santa’s address.

“I think I’d have to go to outer space to feel like I was away from them.” She wandered away, and Aoi thought that was the end of their conversation. But then she came back, carrying their father’s world globe. Aoi had long since pawned everything of worth that their parents owned, but no one wanted something like this. It was an old version of the world map, with certain countries labeled by their old names, and new nations not represented at all. It was like a frozen snapshot of the world as it had been before the elder Kurashikis had died.

Akane set it down on the table, obscuring the more damning words in the headlines. Akane pressed her fingers to one of Asia’s lakes, and set the sphere spinning. “Close your eyes, and pick our new home, okay?”

She had invoked one of their childhood games. Aoi’s eyelids fell shut, and he reached out in the darkness. Tried to grasp on to their tentative future.

“It’s... the ocean,” Akane said, voice blank. "I don't want to live there."

“Any islands?”

“Nope.”

Aoi swallowed. “Spin it again.”

"Think about where you really want to go. Where we _should_ go."

He concentrated even harder this time. The spinning sound was gentle, hypnotic, and for some reason he thought of the only time he'd ever had his tarot cards read

_(The cop was steering the lifeboat and would not let any of the kids help. Water lapped over the edges off the boat, spraying their benches with saltwater. He’d slung an arm over Akane’s shoulders, like if he just held on tight enough she’d never be in danger again. Teeth chattering, Nona proposed a one-card reading to kill the time. Now he couldn’t remember her predictions, but he did know that that The Chariot card had somehow ended up in his pocket. Right next to Light’s clover bookmark.)_

When his fingers landed on the globe for a second time, he could tell by the bumps and grooves that he’d found his way to a landmass.

“America,” she said, thoughtfully.

He opened his eyes, hoping to find himself point towards New York, maybe, or somewhere in California. Some place with an easy, media-ready reference. But he had landed a bit to the left of the middle of the country. Vast expanses of land that he knew nothing about.

Akane squinted, trying to make out the name of a state. “I’ll go read up on where we’re going.”

She burst away from him. Aoi had no doubt in his mind that she would do as promised.

*

Wealth greased the wheels of their immigration. Akane and Aoi avoided the major cities, choosing instead to relocate to a small town nestled within red-brown mountain ranges. It was nothing like the pictures of deserts that Akane keptfinding in google, and nothing like their home city, either. Even though the air was thin, Aoi liked it from this altitude; you could see potential intruders for miles. 

His sister had been rather resilient after their parents’ deaths, and she was resilient now. She went to school, completed her homework on time, ate dinner, laughed with Aoi, and did everything expected of her.

In winter the land grew chilly, but it was still much warmer than it had been back home. Oftentimes, Aoi would be caught driving home in snow storms that melted in the next day’s sunlight. The lengthening nights were the most telling sign of the shifting season. Soon enough, their neighbors adorned their houses with Christmas lights, and stores put fake cotton-y snow in their display fronts. Akane bought him many presents that year, but the scarf was the only one he would still be using in later years; she had made it herself.

Every so often Aoi had that one nightmare about being trapped in fire, his spine turning to ash. If he screamed, it was with his sister’s voice.

Each time it happened, Akane would see through his claims of exhaustion the next day. She’d hug him right there in the kitchen, pressing her head into his chest.

“I’m glad we never got a house with an incinerator.” That was the only time she said anything about it. Otherwise silence seemed to be her gift to him.

She had more than enough food now, but there was something bony and childlike about her body. Even as time amplified her otherworldly qualities, the nightmare reminded them both of the truth. She was still alive. He was still her big brother. And they both needed each other.

*

Akane's phone beeped, and she glanced down

“Anything interesting happen?” Aoi asked.

“Oh, I just…” The sleeves on her sweaters tended to be overlong, and she fiddled with them now. “I have a text alert set up to tell me if Jump- if Junpei’s been up to anything. Anything that would make the news, I mean.”

“And he has?” Aoi tried his hardest to remember anything about her sister’s friend. All he could recall was the day she’d come home with splotches of blood on her blouse, and a rambling monologue about how Junpei had avenged some murdered bunnies. 

“Yeah. Junpei just won a science fair. His team did something related to constellations. He’s smart.

“You look surprised.”

“Oh, it’s just that... They included his picture and he looks…” Aoi expected her to say ‘happy’ or ‘good’ or (ack!) ‘kinda cute.’ Instead she took a sharp turn into the obscure; “He looks like how he’s supposed to look. When he gets older.” 

Aoi was baffled.

"Good for him?"

"Yeah. I guess it’s good."

*

Aoi drove south, blasting the radio so loud he’d probably wreck his speakers sooner rather than later. Despite all this, Akane dozed in the passenger seat. Her thumb was in danger of slipping out between the pages of a library book. 

When they pulled into Lowell Observatory, she woke slowly. Opening and closing her mouth like a fish. During recent months, she’d grown in height, and her teachers invariably praised her wit and maturity. But in moments like this he was reminded that she was still just a kid. She hadn’t even started high school.

“We’re here,” he said.

She gave him a solemn nod, and then an ear-to-ear grin. They walked up tidy stone paths, and breathed in the scent of tall pine trees. At one point, Aoi joked about trying to climb them, but Akane’s mortification at the idea stopped him cold.

They took in the museum and then goofed off in gift shop. He bought her a glow-in-the-dark bookmark, and she bought him a small telescope. Aoi had to admit there was something nice about being able to buy her presents in times other than Christmas. He could be Santa Claus year round.

“So, this is where they discovered Pluto, huh?” On the way out they paused once more, to look back at the observatory. It was a handsome, pale building. Above them, the sky was so close, so bright, that he half expected to knock his head against it. He imagined the world above appeared less tangible at night. That's when the stars would appear; distant, bright fists of blazing energy. He wondered about the intelligence it would take to make notes of their movements, write down equations to represent them. To discover that one was not a star at all.

(For some reason, he recalled Akane’s friend again. Junpei of the award winning astronomy project. Maybe he would know how that sort of thing was done.)

“Yep. They found Pluto here.” She laughed. “And then a few decades later, I guess they lost it.”

“Oh, come on. They didn’t lose it. They just demoted it. They know exactly where it is.”

“Is that so? Do you know where it is?” She poked him in the ribs.

They both stared up, again, shielding their eyes from the sun. Their world’s closest star.

“No idea.” He squeezed her hand in his. “The planets are always moving, after all.”

 

*

Akane seemed to glide into their house, like pollen on the spring wind. She held some of the season’s first flowers in her fist, and Aoi could see that a few of the petals were browning around the edges. They knew that they were dead things, even if they were still colorful and vibrant. 

“Do you ever have nightmares?” he asked her, while she filled a vase with water. All at once, it seemed important.

Akane glanced over her shoulder, and then turned away from him. There was something reproachful in her silence, as though he’d spoken too loud in a library.

“I don’t remember my dreams,” she said, placing the flowers on a nearby table. “But I don’t think I have nightmares.”

“You sure?” He stared at the back of his sister’s head. Her dark hair had become somewhat matted in the breeze. “If you were having bad dreams, you could come talk to me about it…”

She spun around, presented him with a perfectly genial expression. Akane would grow up to be one hell of a liar, but he would always be able to see through her.

“Okay, I’ll keep that in mind!”

She breezed away. Out of the room, out of their home. Aoi hunched over, at once boneless, distraught. He rested his face against the chilly, linoleum countertop, trying to retrace their experiences on the Gigantic. There had been hours- possibly days- in which she had been out of his sight. This period of time was a blank page, an empty canvas, a vacant space. And in this void existed the array of potential brutalities done to Akane. Until she told him- until he knew for sure- it might as well be the case that all of these things had happened to her. 

*

_My early death was inevitable. I tried to pretend as if I was going to be killed by a natural disaster. It never worked. I always remembered that I would die because of a conscious choice by one specific individual. I also remembered that I had been given the tools to prevent it. I tried to deny it but I didn't want to die._

Akane paused, and stared at her computer document.

Erase, erase, erase. She made the last word of her newest sentence vanish.

_I didn't want to be murdered._

Because wasn't that the crux of all things? She still had the pen she stole from her meeting with Cradle’s attorney. She picked it up, and she turned it on herself. The ink colored in the creases of her heart line and life line. In her feverish typing, she had drifted a bit too far into the realm of the personal. Her existence- her story- had to be hidden until the very last moment.

Narrowing her eyes, she highlighted the newest paragraph in her document. One click of the backspace, and it was gone.

*

When Aoi the door to their hotel room, he heard the news report before he saw his sister.

Rounding the corner, he found Akane sitting on her bed. The talking heads on tv speculated about the wildfire, theorizing in circles about what had started it. When it would stop. How much money it would cause the state.

Aoi crackled with jittery energy all over, as though they’d emerged from a thunderstorm instead of an oncoming wildfire.

Every June, the air around them thinned out, and gusty winds howled outside their windows. The tiniest spark traveled easily. It turned yellowed and dry leaves into kindling, and transformed the tall forests into wild infernos. This was the first year that the wildfires had threatened to come near their home, however. That morning, the reports had scared him so badly he’d shoved Akane awake, and yelled that they were going to evacuate. She’s just blinked at him, owlishly. However, though he’d set the plan in motion, she’d managed the details with her usual keen eye. She packed their first aid kit, made sure he’d worn long sleeves for once, wrapped bandannas around their faces, and bemoaned their lack of protective eye gear. When they drove away, it was the polar opposite of their last long car ride. They didn’t speak, didn’t turn the dial away from the news, and they drove and drove and drove.

Now, in the hotel room, Aoi thought he could still taste ash in his mouth.

“Someone out there is probably wishing they could go back a week and properly put out their camp fire.”

Aoi expected to make out fear or anger of disgust in her voice, but mostly all he heard was faint pity. Maybe it came from distraction. After all, his sister was always absorbing information about the world. Always reading, always watching tv, always listening to the news. 

He mumbled some greetings, and began the process of hanging up his nicer clothes. He couldn’t bear to actually look at the tv, but what he’d heard so far led him to believe they’d be here for a while.

“I’ve been following the spread of the fire,” she called out to him. “I don’t think it’s going to get our house at all. But I’m… still glad we left.”

“Why are you watching that stuff, Akane?” He asked it as gently as possible. “It’s not like staring at the TV will make the fire go in the direction you want it to go.”

He expected some kind of mild retort. It was such a crappy day, that it was also possible she’d honor him with one of her sullen silences.

He got neither thing; “Aoi, you should buy some Cradle stock.”

Aoi walked over to her, and turned off the TV. Her surprised face reflected back at him in the newly darkened screen.

“Why,” he asked, “would I do something like that?”

“Because you just turned eighteen.”

“Oh. Right. Now I get it.”

She flopped backwards, onto the scratchy comforter with its bright, floral design. “And I think they’re going to make a lot of money very soon. They still owe you more than they can ever give you, but it’s a start.”

“Getting more money from them…” He rubbed his feet against the scratchy carpet. “Are you telling me to ‘get revenge by living well’ again?”

Akane never responded. Aoi heard the gentle push and pull of her breath, and he realized she’d drifted off into a nap.

It would be a dreamless nap, he remembered. If she been telling the truth about that.

 

*

Akane could be a thrill seeker. She never panicked while bungee jumping, never feared walking alone in the deep hours of the night. Aoi had never seen her happier than during the initial ascent of a roller coaster. When he let her drive his car around the block, she rounded the corners in sharp, ruthless turns.

And when they went out to the Grand Canyon, he was in for another rude awakening. Namely, his sister had no fear of heights. She just stood there, toes millimeters away from the edge, loose strands of hair wavering in the wind. For some reason he thought of the first time he’d let go of a balloon. He’d cried- absolutely dumbfounded- as it had floated away into the sky.

“Akane!” he called. She shoved her hands in her jacket and trotted back to him. 

“It’s so beautiful,” she said. “You can totally _see_ how it was carved out by this huge ancient river. And there are multiple parts to the Grand Canyon, because of all the smaller rivers that broke away…”

“Akane,” he repeated, looking down at her feet. Ascertaining that they were, indeed, on firmer ground. “I thought you were going to fall.” Or jump. Maybe.

“You don’t have to worry about me.” There was nothing petulant or sophomoric about her tone. She was factual, precise, and nothing concerned Aoi more.

“You keep telling me that I should go away to college one of these days, but I’m not sure you know how to take care of yourself.”

She put one of her hands on his shoulder, and then slowly pushed him away from her. It wasn’t anything as severe as a shove, but she still forced him to take a step back. Forced him away from her, even as she maintained her grip on his body. At some point, in the past few years, his sister had become strong. 

They stood there like that for the better part of half a minute. Her fingers digging into his shirt, his boots grinding into the clay-like earth. He had wounded her spirit, he knew. They came from the exact same background, after all, and nothing stung more than the assertion he couldn’t handle his own affairs. It must be the same way for his sister.

In the early years of his life, his first emotion towards her had been overwhelming surprise. After that came the protective instincts. Later still, came his pride in the young adult she was becoming. Now he saw that pride was an inadequate word for all that they had shared. She was… No, he couldn’t claim she was his mirror. 

They were two tributaries from the exact same river.

*

A week later, she tiptoed into his bedroom, cradling her laptop to her chest.

“I’m so sorry, Aoi,” she said, depositing the laptop onto his desk. “I didn’t want you to… I didn’t want to be a burden. But I think that not telling you is even more of a burden to you.”

A Word document lay open in the blinding bright screen. He fumbled around to dim the computer’s glow.

“What am I looking at?”

His sister began slinking away. For some reason she walked backwards, even though she wouldn’t look him in the eye.

“You’ll see. Promise me you won’t come talk to me about it until you’ve read the whole thing.”

Akane rarely asked for much, so all he could do was nod.

“The whole thing,” Akane repeated. And then she was gone.

And so Aoi read. He read, and read, and read, until nothing seemed real save for the tale unfolding on the computer screen. Within a few pages, he wanted to renege on his promise to Akane. He couldn’t understand why she was depicting a fiction version of herself participating in a second nonary game. And he couldn’t understand why Junpei- of all people- was narrating the thing.

When the bombs found their way into the story he knew that someone would end up exploding. But he _hadn’t_ expected Akane to go into such detail on what that kind of corpse would look like. He ran his hands up and down his arms, subconsciously making sure they were still attached. 

The characters didn’t make him feel any better. They were all familiar, in a cryptic sort of way. Certain traits of theirs skirted around the edges of his memory, demanding he figure out their true identities. It was easy enough to pinpoint that Snake was Light (and judging by his portrayal, Akane had admired him.) Subsequently, it was obvious that Clover was his real life sister. Seven’s competence gnawed on him, as did Lotus’s forthright nature and Ace’s moments of reticence.

 

Santa was one of the biggest mysteries of this whole piece. The codename and appearance matched his own, but his general disinterest in Akane did not. 

When the story arrived in the boiler room, his possible counterpart confessed that his sister had died. He didn’t know what to make of _that_. Not when “June” was still alive, and nodding along in sympathy to Santa’s story.

There was a never-ending stream of bloodshed in his sister’s novel, and it almost (almost!) drowned out Aoi’s unanswered questions.

And then…

And then he read about his sister’s immolation. He read about his novel counterpart scraping up Akane’s charred organs from the floor. 

Aoi closed the computer. 

He stood up, and he went outside. He took it upon himself to discover why his sister liked her risky late night walks so much. His bare feet walked across the cool cobblestones of their walkway, a couple pine needles ending up affixed to his heels. He heard a dog barking in the distance, but otherwise his surroundings were utterly stationary. He wasn’t like Akane. He couldn't find connections in disparate pieces of information. All he knew there was a reason she wrote about her own murder. 

Feeling hollowed out, he returned to the story one last time. It wasn’t long before the narrative morphed and shifted, his sister’s true voice spilling out, lending everything a new kind of clarity. 

_”The answer to that is easy. He knew because I knew.”_

 

*

“You read it all?” 

He didn’t remember falling onto her bed, but it must have happened. He couldn’t remember how they ended up hugging, either. But he would remember how he bawled long, and hard. He hadn’t cried since she’d stumbled into his arms in the incinerator. He thought he'd run out of tears back then, but time was good at proving a person wrong.

*

He woke alone, but Akane was nearby in the window seat. The morning sun blazed around her face, bright enough to erase her features.

“So now you know,” she said, as if he hadn’t been in a dreamless sleep for hours. As if they had had a conversation last night, rather than a mutual crying session.

“Now I know,” he croaked.

At once she moved, to kneel on the floor. She rested her cheek on the bed.

“Look, try not to worry about it. You’ve given me a good life, and I have five years to put my affairs in order, so-”

“Wait.” Aoi wanted to hug her again, but was afraid she’d melt away in tiny shards. Like poking at charcoal that had blazed for hours. “Don’t tell me you’re planning on dying.”

“I can't make you go through another nonary game.” Her voice was so quiet, she was almost mouthing the words. Her eyes were so bright.

“And I can’t live without you for the rest of my life.”

Akane muffled a sob against the bedspread. She reached blindly for his hand and he caught it.

*

Traversing the broad Nevada desert took them far from the road, but she made sure the car was stocked with water. Otherwise, all they had to go on was a set of classified coordinates, and her memories from the future. 

“What an eyesore,” Aoi said, as the gray walls of Cradle’s second warehouse came into sight. 

Akane could appreciate that some things were meant to be nothing more than utilitarian in purpose. However, because the land was so flat, the building looked closer than it actually was. She quickly grew resentful of its appearance after staring for so long. 

“Our worst day trip yet,” Akane agreed, hugging the small safe to her chest. 

When they arrived, and she she stepped out of the car, every bit of moisture fled from her skin. The heat should have reminded her of incinerators or wildfires or the nightmares her brother would never describe. And yet, she felt no alarm, experienced no overwhelming urge to leave. Her brother had chosen to fight for her survival, therefore unwavering serenity seemed like the price to pay for his sacrifice. 

The doors weren’t locked, so Akane and Aoi turned on their flashlights and ventured inside. No one had been here in years. Their movements kicked up dust, and their blue-ish lights illuminated it as it floated about. Akane was reminded of snowfall. 

“There’s a lot of work to be done,” Aoi said, while they made their way down a grand staircase. “Unless you want to leave it this way, and give everyone allergies.”

Akane descended. She could already feel it; her current self rushing to meet her future self. In four and a half years, she would walk down these same steps. She’d trip, she’d fall onto Junpei, she’d pretend her fate wasn’t chained to his. 

_I can do it. I can become June. If that’s what it takes, I can be June for you._

“We can start our work over there,” she said, aiming her flashlight at a certain door. They pried it open, and she walked without guilt over through the space that would be riddled with the pieces of Teruaki Kubota. In a few years June would refuse to come in here, but Akane Kurashiki was nothing if not inquisitive. 

“Okay, mission accomplished,” Aoi said, after she’d placed the safe in the closet. 

He didn't ask about its contents because he already knew.


End file.
